


Virtual

by missingparentheses



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Buddy System Season 2, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 16:00:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13057323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missingparentheses/pseuds/missingparentheses
Summary: After the close of Buddy System Season 2, Rhett and Link explore a relationship between them despite the physical changes they've experienced.





	Virtual

**Author's Note:**

> It was only a matter of time before someone took this on, yes?
> 
> Thanks to [Heather](http://ladycynthiana.tumblr.com) for reading this over, and for reminding me, when I'd considered leaving it at only the first part of the story, that I would have to keep going because the people would demand it. ;)

He can almost feel the breeze. He wonders idly if it’s the usual experience here, if all the residents—players? users? members?—can feel it too, or if his experience is special. He closes his eyes and engages his other senses. He feels real here, human, warm and alive. It’s a wonder of technology, even if psychosomatic. There are, after all, no sensors on his body. Only the glove, which barely fits over his hand, and the mask on his face, the small bit of him that’s still truly human.

They didn’t come here to farm. They moved away from the town, out into a field long abandoned, its user having returned to the life outside, and good for them. Real life _must_ be better than the small, fruitless existence here, and Link knows it is, but he can feel the lack now. He doesn’t regret his decision, not totally. He can work like never before, and nothing gives him greater pleasure.

But Rhett. He’d convinced him there’s more. Pleasure is not limited to a satisfying day’s hard labor. There’s more to be had.

He feels, rather than hears, Rhett approach. He feels the air move against a body that looks like his old one, and he glances down. Rhett helped him program it, down to the angle at which his rib cage slopes away from his chest, and Rhett’s hands come around him, breath in his ear.

“Do you feel me?”

Link nods. “Do you? I mean...is it just me? Is it just…”

He feels the brush of Rhett’s beard behind him when he shakes his head. “It’s not just you.”

Link sighs. He’s unsure whether it reassures or disappoints him to know that it’s not his artificial body that allows him to have an organic experience here, but he forgets what regret may have surfaced for a moment when Rhett’s hands begin to move.

He gasps, his heart fluttering at the feel of soft fingertips over the curve of muscles, and a laugh bubbles out of him at the realization—even the flutter of a heartbeat can be simulated. The alarm clock in his chest is like, well, clockwork, not subject to the rush of excitement and arousal stirring in his cold, hard body. His brain still knows the signals, synapses shooting messages aimlessly into the void, unaware of the change. But here he is, feeling it, warm and rich like hot blood and sweat. He reaches up and behind him, over his shoulder to grip the back of Rhett’s neck just as warm lips press beneath the line of his jaw.

“Rhett.” He hears the word rush out of his mouth in a tight, panicked whisper, and Rhett replies against his skin in a simple hum of acknowledgement. Link swallows, gripping harder at the nape of Rhett’s neck. “Rhett, I don’t know... I don’t know how…”

Rhett’s hands drift up to Link’s shoulders and turn him, slowly, until they’re face to face.

“You don’t need to do anything. I got you.”

 

He wouldn’t dare admit it, but it’s a relief to see the real Rhett in front of him again. The thought flashes through his mind without warning when his back reaches the ground, the abstraction mingling with appreciation for the realistic feel of overgrown field grass and rocky soil. The sun is above him, and Link grins, reaching up to touch the blond locks, his mind’s eye providing the muscle memory. It erases dark curls, replacing them with golden waves, loosened from their tie and cascading around his face like a wispy curtain. Link threads his fingers into it and feels his throat constrict in a withheld sob. Real fingers, skin and nerves, and Rhett’s cheek beneath his palm.

Link’s mouth is real, and he knows the taste of Rhett’s lips by now. The doctor’s home had been blissfully empty, save a dog, a bird, and three fish, all of whom were welcome companions. They’d explored every room when they arrived, peeking in closets and holding their breath as they searched for evidence of a family. They’d found none, and as the hours passed, no keys rattled in the lock, no voices announcing their return. He had been alone, and now so were they.

Rhett had brought their lips together almost without thought, it seemed, like this was simply something they did. It was a celebration, after all. He had been tugging at his new hair all day, trying to tame it into something familiar. His fingers couldn’t seem to leave it alone, nor the heavy glasses on his face and the roundness of his belly. But when his hair had been teased back a bit and his glasses lay upside-down on the kitchen table, Link could squint and see a resemblance. He surprised himself most of all when, with that next kiss, he had taken the initiative. He’d seen the glimmer of his own Rhett on the doctor’s face, and he’d leaned in, inhibitions forgotten. Rhett had seemed no more shocked than when he’d done the same.

But now, the starkness of the face Rhett was meant to have raises a lump in Link’s throat. He draws Rhett down, hands on both sides of his soft beard to taste him again. He understands now how Rhett got so lost in this virtual world once before, when it can be so easy to embrace a fantasy normally just out of reach. In this world, Rhett’s fingers glide up the plane of skin across the belly Link once had, and he feels the goosebumps—he remembers goosebumps. He’s never been touched, not like this, but somehow his mind knows how it should feel. He feels the warmth of Rhett’s hands and the coolness of the breeze across exposed skin. He feels hot breath and soft lips pressed to his belly button, a beard grazing his waistband, the sharp trail of wetness traced by a famously talented tongue. Link digs his fingernails into Rhett’s scalp when he feels the button of his jeans pop open.

He knows his body is gone, but his brain registers hot, wet heat, and Link gasps, marvels at its realness. He wants to know how Rhett is doing this, making him feel this when there’s nothing to feel, but he knows if he removed the mask, it would kill him. To see his cold, mechanical body now, of all moments, would splinter his psyche. So he presses on, presses in.

His hips roll, his back arching, and Rhett grips the bones of his hips to keep him in place, for both their sakes. Link’s eyes are wet like the tongue that drags up his length, and he has to fight to stay, to remember, holding tight to the knowledge that his mind is what makes him himself. The tears fall from human eyes, whimpers and moans from flesh-and-blood lips, and his mind, his mind is the true seat of love and longing, alarm clock heart be damned. Link grips his own hair, feels the skin on his face that’s his, _his_ , and not some bullshit synthetic.

The rhythm of Rhett’s mouth on his body makes him almost forget. The spooling tension, bouncing off heavy walls that he fights even now, shoving it back inside and living in the warm flesh buried in Rhett’s grasp, embraced by hands and lips and worshipping gaze. Link is ready, and he bucks his hips fearlessly, knows Rhett can keep up as he chases the tension.

His release comes like static, white noise in place of white light and white heat. He cries out, screams for it, thrusts at the back of Rhett’s throat, and for nothing. Nothing. He’s machine, more thing than man. It’s a goddamn video game, and there’s no ecstasy in simulation. He sees it now, the digitized symmetry in Rhett’s face. He feels the feedback loop in the breeze, the same two birds cycling overhead. The sun hasn’t moved since they arrived.

He’ll retch if he looks at the fake field a moment longer, but the reality beyond his mask is no reassurance. Rhett stares at him bewildered, glasses replaced, dark hair curled around his forehead.

“I want my body back,” Link says, breathless and sure. “Any body. Flesh and bone. Can you do that for me?”

Rhett nods. “Anything.”


End file.
